The King's Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church

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Yale University Press, Jan 1, 2007 - History - 736 pages

A major reassessment of England's break with Rome

Henry VIII's reformation remains among the most crucial yet misunderstood events in English history. In this substantial new account G. W. Bernard presents the king as neither confused nor a pawn in the hands of manipulative factions. Henry, a monarch who ruled as well as reigned, is revealed instead as the determining mover of religious policy throughout this momentous period. In Henry's campaign to secure a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which led him to break with Rome, his strategy, as Bernard shows, was more consistent and more radical than historians have allowed. Henry refused to introduce Lutheranism, but rather harnessed the rhetoric of the continental reformation in support of his royal supremacy. Convinced that the church needed urgent reform, in particular the purging of superstition and idolatry, Henry's dissolution of the monasteries and the dismantling of the shrines were much more than a venal attempt to raise money. The king sought a middle way between Rome and Zurich, between Catholicism and its associated superstitions on one hand and the subversive radicalism of the reformers on the other. With a ruthlessness that verged on tyranny, Henry VIII determined the pace of change in the most important twenty years of England's religious development.

 

Contents

The Divorce
1
Anne Boleyn
4
Henrys Campaign for the Divorce
9
Henrys Case for the Divorce
14
The Challenge to Papal Authority
26
Threats against the Church
43
1532
50
The Reformation Statutes
68
The Final Suppression of the Monasteries
433
Refoundations?
442
The Generalisation of the Policy of Voluntary Surrenders
445
The Attack on Shrines and Friars
452
Government Policy 153839
455
Compliance Reluctance and Resistance
462
Glastonbury Colchester and Reading
467
The Making of Religious Policy
475

Opposition
73
Elizabeth Barton the Nun of Kent
87
Bishop John Fisher
101
Thomas More
125
Observant Franciscans
151
Charterhouses
160
Syon
167
Bishop Fishers Episcopal Colleagues
172
Nobility Parliament and People
199
Reginald Pole
213
Authority and Reform
225
Henry VIIIs Religion
228
Visitation and Supremacy
243
Reform
247
The Ten Articles of 1536
276
Rebellion and Conspiracy
293
Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace
319
Reginald Poles Legation
404
The Poles and the Marquess of Exeter
407
The Proclamation of 16 November 1538
490
John Lambert
492
The Injunctions of 1538 and the Proclamation of 26 February 1539
494
The Act of Six Articles
497
Cranmers Religion
506
Cromwells Religion
512
Cromwell and the Bible
521
Calais
527
German Alliances
533
Cromwell and Anne of Cleves
542
The Fall of Thomas Cromwell
556
The Fall of Cromwell and the Defence of the Middle Way
569
Religious Policy from 1540
579
Conclusion
595
Notes
607
Bibliography
703
Index
713
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

G.W. Bernard is professor of early modern history at the University of Southampton. His books include Power and Politics in Tudor England.

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